1. Field of Invention
This invention relates to a ball catching system for training soccer players.
2. Prior Art
Soccer is a major global professional and recreational sport. According to a National Geographic study in 2006, soccer was played by more than 120 million regular players and countless others on beaches, playgrounds and streets.
Professional teams are more likely to have practice or training sessions 3 or 4 times per week. Amateur level teams usually have an organized training session at least once a week. In the local youth soccer leagues, training sessions usually take place at a local park, where the number of local youth teams having a practice session at the same time often limits training space. To make full use of the available field space and time (approximately a 60-90 minute session), a soccer coach must carefully plan the training drills.
At the youth level, one of the major functions of a soccer coach is to teach beginning players the basic individual skills required to become a good soccer player. An important skill for a soccer player to develop is shooting and scoring. Shots must be both accurate and powerful. Other skills include correctly connecting with the ball when shooting, heading, volleying, receiving and passing. These drills require lots of repetitive practice. At this early stage of a player's development, a coach will usually feed a ball to the player who would then kick, volley or head the ball forward. The distance the ball travels is not important here. The idea is for the young player to develop the art of making correct contact with the ball and understanding how the contact with the ball affected the trajectory of the ball.
In the game of soccer, a goal is awarded when the whole of the ball has crossed the goal line. When practicing penalty shots and direct free kicks, it is important to know exactly where the ball crosses the goal line. In practice sessions, this is more important than seeing where the ball hits the back of a regular goal net. However, it is difficult if not impossible for the coach or player to judge where the ball crossed the goal line and thus obtain feedback on the shooting or heading technique.
Soccer coaches use a variety of practice drills to further develop the skills of young players. A good example of this is the circuit drill, which involves a number of players and very often the whole squad of players. Several versions for setting up for this type of group drill are used.
One example is to have a group of players stand in a line approximately 25 yards out from the goal. The coach is positioned about 10 yards in front of and at an angle to the first player in the line. The coach will have lots of soccer balls at his feet. To start the drill the coach will pass a ball to the first player in the line who then dribbles around several cones before shooting at the goal net. The player then sprints to the back of the line of players to wait his/her turn to repeat the drill. Depending on the skill levels and the number of players involved the waiting time could be from 1 to 2 minutes. During this time, the players tend to become distracted and start to lose focus on the drill they are working on.
During soccer training sessions, it is not unusual for precious training time to be wasted. Wasted training time can be caused by a number of reasons, for example, retrieving stray balls that have been kicked beyond the boundaries of the practice area, players having to stand in line waiting for their turn to perform certain individual drills such as heading, shooting, dribbling, and shooting practice at a soccer goal with or without a net. When the player's shot misses the goal completely the soccer balls have to be retrieved for as much as 10 to 30 yards behind the goal.
In order to provide coaches and players greater feedback during their practice sessions and more effectively utilize the limited field and training time, several devices or practice nets have previously been proposed, but they suffer from several deficiencies. One such common net, which has a mesh size smaller than the diameter of a soccer ball, is suspended in a vertical plane and serves to stop the ball projected at it by the practicing soccer player. This soccer net thus serves, as with practice nets for other games, merely to provide an early termination of the ball trajectory so that practice is conveniently confined within a small space.
One disadvantage of such practice nets lies in the fact that the ball after striking the net and delivering up its kinetic energy immediately falls to the ground so that the exact place at which it struck the net is not recorded, but must be judged by eye. The absence of this information is a drawback so far as the soccer player is concerned since during training sessions it is important to know if the ball is consistently and accurately being directed to a particular location on the goal opening.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,725,444 discloses a training net that hangs vertically and that incorporates a limited number of relatively large pockets located in four or five locations that are judged important to develop a player's shooting skills. The limited number of pockets and the size of the opening for these pockets decrease the feedback the players receive during their practice sessions. Unless the ball enters the pocket, the player does not know how close the ball came to the target pocket. Since the pockets are at a limited number of fixed locations, the player is limited in terms of developing skills that will enable them to direct the ball at any location in the goal opening. Furthermore, this net an only be used from one side of the net, the side with the opening to the pocket, thereby limiting the type and number of practice drills and the number of players able to use the net at one time.
British patent GB2057895, discloses the construction of a ball game practice net that will capture a moving ball and retain it in the region in which the ball struck the net. In this disclosure, horizontal hanging pockets are created by appropriately joining two nets of different mesh sizes. The front large mesh net with an aperture larger than the diameter of the practice ball allows the ball to enter. The back net with an aperture smaller than the diameter of the practice ball retains the ball. The greater amount of the back net that is attached to the front net results in the creation of a pocket with a drooping form that serves to retain a captured ball, but also facilitates such capture when struck by the ball to absorb energy and avoid rebound. The construction of the pocket is illustrated in the three figures contained in GB2057895, reproduced below and designed as Prior Art FIG. 1, Prior Art FIG. 2 and Prior Art FIG. 3.
Prior Art FIG. 1 is a front elevation of one embodiment of a practice device constructed in accordance with the present invention.
Prior Art FIG. 2 is a side elevation of the device of Prior Art FIG. 1, and
Prior Art FIG. 3 is a perspective view of a portion of the practice device of Prior Art FIG. 1 and Prior Art FIG. 2.
In order to verify the performance of the pocket design for a soccer training device, a net, with outside dimensions identical to the dimensions of the soccer frame, was constructed in accordance to the claims of the pocket design contained in patent GB2057895. This net was attached to the frame using traditional net fastening techniques such as ropes, hooks or non-extensible straps. Trials with this net demonstrated that up to 70% of the balls hitting the front of the net, the side with the large aperture mesh net, are retained by the pockets. However, it was also observed that about 30% of the time when the ball hits the net and is captured by a pocket, it initially bounces or slides away from the impact point and ends up falling into pockets that are immediately adjacent to the impact point or into pockets that could be two or three pockets away and around the impact point. Therefore, while the net captures up to 70% of the balls, only about 50% of the total balls hitting the net are captured and retained at the actual point of impact. When using the backside of the net for this performance evaluation session, it was observed that pockets, at the point of impact, capture about 40% of the balls hitting the back of this net. The back of the net is defined as the ball first hitting the small aperture net, pushing this net through the large aperture mesh net and falling into this inverted pocket.
It appears that the pocket design, claimed in British patent GB2057895, does not sufficiently absorb the kinetic energy of the ball and about 50% of the time the ball rebounds from the impact point and either falls to the ground or in some situations is subsequently caught in another pocket.
The pocket design disclosed in patent GB2057895 relies on the ball to drop into a pocket created out of the excess vertical material of the small aperture mesh net. However, in order for the ball to drop into this pocket, a certain amount of the net, a cone, parabolic like shape, has to wrap around the ball, travel in the direction of the ball, decelerate the ball and in the process remove the kinetic energy of the ball. Only after the ball has lost most of its kinetic energy, will the ball be able to drop or slide down the rear small aperture net and become trapped by this extra small aperture mesh. If the net does not wrap around the ball and absorb the kinetic energy of the ball, the net will act as an immovable object and the ball will rebound from the net without sliding down into the drooping pocket.
This low capture percentage for the front and back of the net with pockets made in accordance with GB2057895 would not provide the required training feedback to players making the net unsuitable for soccer training purposes and hence, commercially unattractive.
The present invention is directed to overcoming the problems encountered in the aforementioned patents